Detective AI

Julian Romo is draped across his twin bed, clad in only his boxers as he dozes in the summer heat. There are at two fans trying cycle the air in both the bedroom and the kitchen/living room. Someone knocks at the door but there’s too much sleep in Julian for him to wake up. He spent the last three months studying for his MCAT, which he took this morning. A piece of paper gently rattles against the wind of the fan as it is pinned down by some books.

All of a sudden, the door swings open and the crack of the wood hitting the drywall sounds like an upper deck home run. Men covered in black rush into the room, Julian picks himself up and thinks he must be in some sort of stress-induced dream. But quickly two of the shadowed men grab his shoulders, spin him around and drive him back into his bed while pinning his arms behind his back. The only thing Julian can hear inaudible screaming meant to be directions and the only thing he can feel is the knee digging into his upper back.

“…the right to remain silent… an attorney, one will be provided for you… in mind, do you wish to speak to me?” said one of the men.

“What, what the hell is going on?” said Julian.

“You are under arrest for the murder of Antoine Cristian and Jose Hernandez,” said the same man.

Julian has now been in this interrogation room for three hours by now. The fluorescent of the lightbulb helps the detectives continue to burrow under Julian’s skin. The detectives continued in the same circular questioning and Julian continued to have no answers.

They had used artificial intelligence to get a warrant for the arrest of Julian Romo. The artificial intelligence used a record of known gang members then other factors, like facial recognition from security and traffic cameras, known criminal records, known locations, and basically any other piece of information that the artificial intelligence could use to try to figure out who committed the crime (kellerlawoffices.com).

The detectives also told Julian that Antoine Cristian and Jose Hernandez were shot in a drive by on the east side of town, about half a mile from Julian’s apartment. Traffic cameras recorded shots being fired from a blue Ford Fusion with the license plate too blurry to read. Julian also happened to have a blue Ford Fusion. But there was a different angle showing a blue Ford Fusion with Julian’s license plate. The artificial intelligence algorithm interpreted that the same person was driving both cars based on facial reconstructions (bbc.com) Julian had also been flagged in the system as a potential drug member due to his name being on a list of clients found during a drug bust. All of that paired with the fact that various cameras had seen Julian in the area around the time of the shooting did not bode well.

Julian was with his girlfriend on the other side of town for most of that day after work but came home around that time which is why the cameras picked him up. His girlfriend even came down to the station and spoke to the detectives, but no dice. The detectives would just not get away from what the almighty artificial intelligence told them. And in the minds of the detectives, Julian fit the bill. He was a Latino young male living in a sketchy part of town whose name was in the logbook of a well-connected drug dealer and was marked by artificial intelligence. The proponents of using artificial intelligence to solve crime is that there are no prejudices in the cold calculations of a computer. But that is incorrect because computers are offspring of their creators, and tend to inherit personality traits of their creator (smithsonianmag.com).  To the detectives, it didn’t matter that he was about to finish up college next year then go wherever his resume could take him.

There did happen to be a Julian Romo in the logbook of the drug dealer, but that was not Julian Romo’s fault. Somebody was buying from this drug dealer for the first time, and when the dealer asked his name, Julian Romo was the first one in his head. The reason it was the first one in his head is because Julian was running for campus representative at that time so there were a lot of mass texts and email forwards that contained his name.

The detectives cared about the fact that Julian Romo’s name appeared inside of a drug den and a fancy algorithm paired his face to a gang drive by. The detectives did not care about any of the alibi’s Julian had to offer. The futuristic and sleek artificial intelligence program gathered so many data points to formulate its culprit that there was no way it could possibly be wrong, right? The algorithm had sifted through all the different versions of Julian Romo on all the different social media sites, searched through all the shadows of the dark web and read every news article containing the words ‘Julian’ and ‘Romo’. The algorithm learned a lot about the Dallas Cowboys that day. Computers don’t have a grey area for biases and mistakes when investigating crimes, they are exact and final. At least, these are the justifications that the detectives were using to push two counts of first-degree murder. Julian faced life imprisonment and a world made up of cement, steel bars and constant supervision.

The detectives were trying to prove a few things to show premeditation and malice in the murder. First, the timing of the videos of the cars makes it seem like Julian is driving directly from his apartment to the shooting and back, and that whole car ride provides ample opportunity to rethink the decision to take another life. The detectives were also standing on the fact that they believed Julian to be a gang member due to the name on the drug dealer’s list. The drug dealer also happened to be a member of a rival gang to Antoine Cristian and Jose Hernandez.

Julian languished in his concrete cell. He used his phone call to call his girlfriend, and now was forced to wait for her to rally all the troops and hopefully a good attorney. The funny thing about this whole situation is that Julian had read about these cases on the news, but they only made the news when they helped to give a happy ending to a crime. A little girl was recovered safely from a kidnapping in Maryland. AI was used to solve the murder of a millionaire, and that whole situation fueled the tabloids for months. Even Julian’s uncle praised it because the police used it to catch the person that robbed and assaulted him. Julian had never understood why some people were hesitant to embrace the future and the endless solutions it brought.

The trial was as tired and exhausted as Julian. The whole ordeal had taken place over such a long time period that Julian forgot what life was like beforehand. Julian instead spent all his time worrying and trying to convince himself that the prospect of spending the rest of his life in jail wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. His girlfriend had broken up with him two months after he was arrested, she couldn’t keep up or deal with the brevity and Julian couldn’t blame her. His family had hired the best lawyer they could pool their money for, but even he had his doubt about what the verdict would return. Julian had been waiting for this moment for so long, craving to expel the wrench thrown into his life.

The foreman of the jury stood and began to talk. Julian waited and listened.

Liam Walsh